Search results

Attempts to “Westernize” post‐socialist economies of Eastern Europe resulted in little or no progress. This paper aims to incorporate the resource‐based view (RBV) paradigm to shed light on the present difficulties and challenges. A shortage of resources, many of which are taken for granted in the West, is identified as a reason why some “Western‐style” approaches did not work.

Reviews of literature in entrepreneurial orientation and RBV serve as a foundation of the development of conceptual arguments. The paper presents a framework elaborating on entrepreneurial development by focusing on the national resource base called enabling resources.

Richardian, functional‐regulatory, and tacit culturally based resources are credited with building national entrepreneurial activity and developing a unique national competency.

The paper does not include empirical validation of its argument. Further empirical research should be done in different cultural contexts.

The paper informs policymakers and entrepreneurs alike towards a monumental task of rebuilding these new democracies. Developed framework provides a way of building resources necessary for sustained entrepreneurial growth unique to each post‐socialist economy.

By focusing on the unique national resource base, the economic development of post‐socialist economies of Eastern Europe may be improved and accelerated. This paper emphasizes the need to consider and examine available resources in the transformation and development of enterprising communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine motivations of social activists in informal initiatives and to understand why they opt for this more spontaneous and self-organized activism while openly defying the hitherto established way of founding non-governmental organizations.

On the basis of a case study of Poland, which had one of the most vibrant civil societies in the socialist region, it is argued that the characteristics ascribed to the functioning of civil society after the toppling of socialism are not reflected in its more recent state. A broader definition of civil society and social activism is suggested to include new types of informal activism, which tend to be over-looked and under-studied. The analysis is built on qualitative and quantitative data gathered in 2014-2015.

The argument put forward is that un-institutionalized engagement is qualitatively different from its formal and institutionalized counterpart. The recent growth of informal activism is indicative of a rebirth of communitarian engagement in Polish civil society and a reaction to the underside of its institutionalization.

In spite of the seminal role played by societal self-organization in the overturning of the socialist system in Eastern European countries, the development of civil society in the region after 1989 has been repeatedly described as passive and characterized by distrustful or individualist attitudes. However, these civil societies have been changing since, and these more recent developments have been neglected by scholars.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the interrelations between organizational trust and ethics management tools as well as ethical organizational practices in a post‐socialist context.

A conceptual framework of the interrelations among organizational trust, ethics management tools and ethical organizational practices is reasoned and the interrelations among the variables are explored using quantitative methods of data analysis. The method of data gathering is a questionnaire survey that was carried out in Lithuania which is taken as an example of a post‐socialist society where trust is rather low. In total, answers from 519 respondents were collected.

The empirical findings confirm the interdependence of the variables. A significant dependence of organizational trust on ethical organizational practices has been established.

The research findings imply that ethics management tools just weakly predict emergence of organizational trust in the organizations operating in a post‐socialist context. Rather, organizational practices which integrate ethical principles are considerably more important to building organizational trust. This is a peculiarity of a post‐socialist context where people were used to the relativity of the declared values and ideas, therefore, tend to search for evidence of value realization in practice. However, since post‐socialist societies differ in their socio‐historical past, this claim is not a generalization.

The paper provides managerial implications how to advance organizational trust in a post‐socialist context.

The research paper provides empirical evidence on the interrelations among organizational trust, ethics management tools and ethical organizational practices, which is scarce in the existing literature on organizational trust. In particular, neither the interrelation between ethics management tools and organizational trust nor a combined effect of ethics management tools and ethical organizational practices on organizational trust has been empirically tested. Thus, the paper fills in this gap in the related literature.

This paper seeks to demonstrate that gender research is crucial to understanding post‐socialist transformations and wider changes in social life. Focused on employment experiences and gender identities of two generations of Bulgarian women, it aims to highlight the complex intertwining of social structure and individual agency and to point out how processes of continuity and change constitute the post‐socialist transformation and individual life journeys.

Informed by feminist analyses of gender and citizenship, generation theory and qualitative interviews, the paper employs the notion of gender imaginaries in comparing continuity and change in gender policy and individual experiences.

The paper argues that significant changes occurred after 1989 in the ways official gender imaginaries were constructed through law, policy, and public discourses. In comparison to this, individual women's gender imaginaries entailed not only change but also sustained attachment to paid work, rejection of domesticity, and continued feelings of gender equality. This suggests that stable and often unquestioned notions of gender had a significant role for individual imaginaries. In addition to this, some of the most considerable changes were manifested in the notions of risk and uncertainty, which have become central aspects of the post‐socialist gender imaginary, particularly in relation to paid work.

The paper engages in a comparison of employment experiences of two generations of women thus directing its enquiry to the combination of individuals' agency in crafting one's life journey and the constraints of social structures and existing gender inequalities. Thus, transformations in individual lived lives of women are seen as interrelated with social change and historic location.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the meta‐narrative that capitalism is becoming totalising and hegemonic. Grounded in an emerging corpus of post‐development thought that has deconstructed this discourse in relation to western economies and the majority (third) world, the purpose of this paper is to further contribute to this burgeoning critique by analysing the degree to which capitalism has penetrated a post‐socialist society, namely Ukraine.

To analyse the penetration of capitalism, a survey is reported of the work practices of 600 households in a array of localities in Ukraine, conducted during 2005/2006 using face‐to‐face interviews.

Analysing the practices used by households to secure their livelihoods, the finding is that capitalism is far from hegemonic. Even when the formal economy is relied on either as their most important or second most important source of livelihood, it is nearly always combined with some other economic activity. A diverse portfolio of work practices is thus the norm rather than the exception with over 90 per cent of households relying on sources other than the formal market sphere as either their most important or second most important source of livelihood.

Displaying the shallow penetration of capitalism in this array of localities in Ukraine, this paper reveals the need for a re‐representation of the realities of work in such post‐socialist societies so as to open up the feasibility of, and possibilities for, alternative futures for work.

This paper reports the first evaluation of the extent to which capitalism has penetrated work practices in post‐socialist Ukraine.

Looks at problems and experiences of the so‐called “bottom‐up” transformation of the post‐socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Bottom‐ up transformation stands for the change of economic structures by means of new enterprises and already existing private firms. Discusses the experiences with the performance of small and new firms in the countries of the West, the potential role of small firms in post‐socialist countries as well as the prerequisites and impediments to the establishment of an economically strong small‐firm sector. Based on information on the development of the small‐firm sector in post‐socialist countries during the past years, analyses the relationship between private‐sector share and economic performance. Draws conclusions concerning implications for the future economic policy, the main conclusion being that bottom‐up transformation may be the only viable way for post‐socialist countries of Eastern Europe to transform but this way requires thorough support by government policy.

Recently, the recurring narrative that capitalism is stretching its tentacles ever moe widely and deeply into every crevice of daily life across the globe has been challenged in the context of Western economies and the Third World by an emerging post‐development corpus of thought. The aim here is to extend this critique of market hegemony by investigating the so‐called “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe.

The paper analyses the extent to which market practices penetrated the “transition” economies of East‐Central Europe in the years following the collapse of the socialist bloc, first through a review of the post‐development literature and then by examining the nature of work and trajectories of the “transition” economies.

Analysis highlights not only the shallow permeation of market practices but also the multiplicity of development trajectories being pursued at both the household and societal levels.

The outcome is to provide additional evidence from the post‐socialist East‐Central European bloc to support the critique of market hegemony and open up the future to alternative possibilities beyond marketisation.

The study examines prevailing understandings and meanings of management represented in Lithuanian higher management education as a selected East European post-socialist country. While concentrating on the notion of management as an institution, the study draws upon the concept of “travel of ideas” by Czarniawska (2008). The study aims at analysing what reasons led to the development of specific management meanings in Lithuanian higher education by considering local historical and socio-political processes of transformation.

The empirical analysis is based on a qualitative content analysis of 23 relevant textbooks on general management in Lithuania, written by local authors.

The results show that the reception and translation of management concepts in Lithuania is mainly focused on rationalistic Anglo-Saxon concepts. Dominating meanings are informed by Taylorism, with alternative or critical management approaches remaining absent. The study additionally reveals the effect of “imprinting”, referring to the fact that local management pioneers have a considerable and sustainable impact on how and which management models and theories are adopted in management education.

Since the analysis is limited to local textbooks in higher education of only one post-socialist country, there is a need for further research, especially for the inclusion of the remaining Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Additionally, other factors that may influence management meanings in higher education in post-socialist countries need to be considered by analysing translated books, management programmes or guest lecturers from other countries.

One of the central implications of the research into management in higher education is the call for a stronger inclusion of management ideas that go beyond Taylorist approaches. These could be team-based management or participative management, as these potentially better align with work-oriented expectations by prospective, especially young, employees.

The study shows the relevance of historic roots regarding managerial thought. The study identifies an “imprinting” by local pioneers in the field of management that establishes initial and enduring meanings of management in a considered country. The mechanism of “imprinting” serves as a selective filter and indicates a local general receptivity towards certain ideas and could, thus, enable or impede travelling of ideas. In the case of Lithuanian higher management education, the study shows that “imprinting” has led to a narrow meaning of management with a higher receptivity towards concepts and approaches that align with Taylor's scientific management theory.

A long‐standing meta‐narrative regarding the future of work is that, over history, economic activity has shifted from the informal into the formal economy and that the informal economy is now a residue existing only in the margins. This paper aims to evaluate critically this formalization thesis so as to question whether the future of work is inevitably and immutably one of formalization.

Primary data are drawn upon from a study of the work practices of 600 households in Ukraine conducted during 2005/2006 to evaluate the centrality of the formal economy in this post‐socialist society.

This study reveals only a relatively shallow permeation of formalization in this post‐socialist society and how the informal economy is a core integral component of contemporary work organization relied on not only by some 28 per cent of households who, excluded from the formal economy, utilize this sphere as their principal livelihood practice but also by the vast majority immersed in the formal economy who heavily depend on informal work to secure their livelihood.

This snapshot survey identifies only that the informal economy is not some minor residue as depicted by the formalization thesis. It cannot decipher whether there is movement in Ukraine towards greater reliance on the formal (or informal) economy.

This paper de‐centers the formal economy by re‐positioning it as just one of a plurality of work practices and foregrounds the informal economy as a core component of work organization in this post‐socialist society.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that informal practices and institutions of post-Soviet countries differ from informality in other post-socialist regions and, therefore, proposes categorizing it as “post-Soviet informality” – a composite definition that extends beyond the concept of “informal economy” and encompasses, along with economic activities, social and political spheres.

The arguments of the paper are based on a comprehensive analysis of secondary sources.

This paper shows that, owing to the effects of antecedent regime’s legacies and the problems of post-communist transition, for the proper analysis of informality in post-Soviet countries it needs to be based on an own concept.

This study, in contrast to the existing literature on informality in post-communist spaces, specifically focuses on the informal sphere of post-Soviet countries, suggesting that the informal institutions and practices thriving across the vast post-Soviet space not only differ from the informal spheres elsewhere in the world, but also from informality in other post-communist regions.